The growth of the United States has done a great deal to break up the traditional codes and creeds which had been adopted in Europe. The civilized world being divided into two parts, one old and densely populated and the other new and thinly populated, social phenomena have been produced which, although completely covered by the same laws of social force, have appeared to be contradictory. The effect has been to disturb and break up the faith of philosophers and students in the laws, and to engender numberless fallacies amongst those who are not careful students. The popular judgment especially has been disordered and misled. The new country has offered such chances as no generation of men has ever had before. It has not, however, enabled any man to live without work, or to keep capital without thrift and prudence; it has not enabled a man to “rise in the world” from a position of ignorance and poverty, and at the same time to marry early, spend freely, and bring up a large family of children. The men of this generation, therefore, without distinction of class, and with only individual exceptions, suffer from the discontent of an appetite excited by a taste of luxury, but held far below satiety. The power to appreciate a remote future good, in comparison with a present one, is a distinguishing mark of highly civilized men, but if it is not combined with powers of persevering industry and self-denial, it degenerates into mere day-dreaming and the diseases of an overheated imagination. If any number of persons are of this character, we have morbid discontent and romantic ambition as social traits. Our literature, especially our fiction, bears witness to the existence of classes who are corrupted by these diseases of character. We find classes of persons who are whining and fault-finding, and who use the organs of public discussion and deliberation in order to put forth childish complaints and impossible demands, while they philosophize about life like the _Arabian Nights_. Of course this whole tone of thought and mode of behavior is as far as possible from the sturdy manliness which meets the problems of life and wins victories as much by what it endures as by what it conquers.